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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4757 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 41 of 83 14 January 2015 at 5:08am | IP Logged | ||
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There are a couple of reasons to do a log like this. One is to report to others who
are interested in your progress. I suspect that not so many are fascinated by yet another report of a person doing FSI Basic Spanish. Another reason is to report interesting ideas about studying material you have come up with. I may have something interesting to report there. I have trouble finding more than an hour to devote to fsi, yet some of the units run well over an hour. The first couple of times through a lesson, I really stink, and it is difficult to stay motivate through over an hour a failing to answer correctly. Another problem I have is that I do fsi at the end of the day, after my other responsiblities, and sometimes I am too tired to maintain focus for an entire hour, much less an hour and a half. Rather than collapse and whine about FSI, I've come up with another approach that is less painful. I was trying to do one unit a week repeating each unit one time each day. I decided to manipulate the variables a little. First I split the units into approximately 6-7 minute files. I did it with a program called "slice audio file splitter". For the past week, I've been adding one more to the sequence of files that I've been covering. This is sort of what is done with the typical plans for shadowing assimil. Each day: 1:1 2:1,2 3:1,2,3 4:1,2,3,4 ..... 8:2,3,4,5,6,7,8 9:3,4,5,6,7,8,9 This way I'm only hitting completely new stuff for the last 6 or 7 minutes of the day, and I should always come through the units for the day in less than 49 minutes. This seems much easier. Also, if one drill is still giving me problems about 7 times through, I can just leave it in the sequence for an extra day or two; it shouldn't add that much to the day. This will move out the day I finish by a couple of months, but I should still get finished this year. I very confident that I can finish this way; it is a very relaxing way to do fsi. I think, ever since I started studying Spanish, that I have spent way too much time studying while I'm too tired. My work is tiring; my pedometer says that I walk 5 to 6 miles a day in addition to having a job which can be emotionally exhausting. I've got to pace myself. If I come home from work with my knees shaking I'm so tired, it is unreasonable to expect great things from my Spanish. I have to maintain the proper amount of strain... Other issues, Unit 20 was surprisingly hard, Unit 21 is surprisingly easy. I've added in some new cards to my deck from about 40 different books, cards I made to study for the superchallenge. These are a little easier on average than my gabo cards, but they are adding in some of the science fiction, historical fiction vocabulary that I don't see in my garcia-marquez cards. My reading ability is absolutely exploding still; I'm not really sure what, if anything, I "just can't read" anymore. Some things are hard, I don't know some words, but I can follow the story in just about anything. This is a big improvement over six months ago. I'm definitely at the point where I could stand to read 10000 pages extensively. I'm considering stopping anki, and replacing it with extensive reading... Edited by sfuqua on 14 January 2015 at 5:13am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4757 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 42 of 83 27 January 2015 at 5:04am | IP Logged | ||
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My mother died the week before last, and I found it completely impossible to do FSI for
about a week and a half. I just couldn't concentrate. I was able to keep up anki, but FSI was a little too much. I seem to be back to normal now, and I finally finished Unit 21; I'll start chapter 22 tomorrow... I fight on. I could be real dramatic about this, but I think that, for me at least, the secret to finishing FSI is simply not to quit. I'll get to the end, hopefully this year. For someone who lacks enough opportunities to practice spoken Spanish, FSI can give practice at building sentences. It seems, so far, to be an excellent way to build up automaticity in things like agreement. My reading skills continue to explode. FSI and anki take up a lot of my reading time, but it would be pretty easy at this point to switch over to doing all my reading in Spanish. I've decided not to drop anki, I realized that in my last post I was basically saying "anki is working great, so I think I'll stop using it." I suspect that in a few months I will reach some sort of point of diminishing returns, but I don't think I'm there yet. FSI is great, but I'm really glad that I'm doing anki along with it. There are huge advantages to a multitrack approach. FSI covers a lot, but I think that you probably need a lot of listening and reading to go along with it for optimal results. If I can finish FSI with solid B1 speaking skills, I would consider it a complete success. I've probably already hit B1 on a good day. I would like to be sure that I'm B1 on a bad day to really sure that I've got speaking down. edited to correct a few of my usual typos Edited by sfuqua on 27 January 2015 at 5:19am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4757 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 43 of 83 03 February 2015 at 5:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I was hoping to count unit 22 as done today, but I was so exhausted after a night of insomnia followed by a day of work and stress that I made a bunch of dumb mistakes. I continue fsi and anki daily. I've recently been shifting to silent reading for my anki deck and for reviewing the fsi lesson before doing it orally. This seems to really improve my comprehension, and it allows to to fill in more time during my day with Spanish. I'm over 10000 cards in anki now. My Spanish reading takes a lot more effort than reading in English, but I'm shocked at how well I can read. I see a lot of words, and I would say that I don't know them, and yet I know what they mean easily in context. I think my reading skills are snowballing rapidly...
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| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4757 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 44 of 83 14 February 2015 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been having more trouble getting fsi into my schedule. I'm not done with unit 23
yet. I think I have it figured out now. I must limit my fsi to about 45 minutes a day; that way I can keep it in my routine even if the schedule is crazy. The regular fsi units are getting too long for the space I have in my schedule, on "bad" days. Fatigue is another issue. I do much, much better with the fsi lessons earlier in the day than I do later, yet I've been trying to do them the last thing, after I get everything else done. This means I have been doing it while very tired some days. The last couple of days I've been doing it at work, before I come home. I think I will need fewer trips through each unit, if I can do it earlier in the day. It's funny to think that I might be adding months to completing the course because I've been doing it when I'm too tired... I'm halfway through the course in terms of units, even though I'm only only about a third of the way through course in terms of hours of instruction. So far there is no sudden improvement in my Spanish, but I am making steady improvement in speaking. I've experimented with doing different types of cards in my anki deck. I'm back to my garcía-márquez cards. I really find his sentences useful, probably because of the high frequency of rare words. I also put a bunch of sentences from my "islands" on lang-8. Anki continues to push my reading in the right direction... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 45 of 83 14 February 2015 at 6:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Steve - I'm sorry to hear about your mom.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4757 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 46 of 83 14 February 2015 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, James. My Mom suffered a lot the final part of her life, so it was good to know
that her suffering was over. She died peacefully in her sleep. Big life events blow holes in language learning plans, of course, but study can be a good way of distracting youself. Work has been extremely stressful lately too, which is why I'm trying to do fSi in 30-45 minute bites rather than the hour-hour and a half size of the Units. If I do fsi earlier in the day, I may be able to get through it with only 3-5 repeats, which might make up for the delay in my schedule caused by going through less than a unit a day. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5367 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 47 of 83 14 February 2015 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with you about language learning being a good way to distract yourself. I credit my Spanish journey with saving my sanity during a very stressful time at work. Keep up the good work.
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| Lusan Diglot Newbie United States Joined 3934 days ago 35 posts - 53 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Polish | Message 48 of 83 15 February 2015 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | ||
I find your journey amazing. I admire your consistency and dedication. However, I cannot understand your interest in Garcia Marquez, who uses a very complex and, for me, boring writing style. It is not that 100 years of solitude and others are bad at all but that his writing style is not fun and full of rare literary words of little use. How about Ortega y Gasset? Cortazar? Isabel Allende? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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